The poetry of the body

Gaston Bachelard's 'The Poetry of Space' was at one time an essential text to read. It gave artists a rationale that they could use to value the poetic (i.e. non scientific) way that they shaped lived experiences and his text demonstrated how emotional responses to spaces like attics, cellars or even drawers, could be communicated through a more poetic understanding.  

What I'm looking for is a companion volume, 'The Poetry of the Body'. Something that like a dérive, eventually finds purpose in wondering about. My unsettled mind, as it flitters around and alights on stuff and then dips into things, never quite settles. I cant seem to drill down and deeply focus on one thing or another, each of my posts skips around an idea, but never quite settles down and I'm looking for some sort of confirmation that this is ok, this is normal.

I was watching a butterfly in the garden yesterday. It seemed to be randomly drifting around, following the shifting air currents as a light breeze passed through the hedge. Then it settled on an old stuffed textile. The cloth was now a pale yellow, a ghost of its former self, but it  offered a moment of warmth to the butterfly, that then spread out its brown spotted wings as a gift to the world. As it bathed in the sun, the surface it had happened upon became something else, a spot for sunbathing. It was a sunbathing spot that hosted a sunbathing moment, like all the billions of moments that butterflies of this sort had had in their pasts and futures. A moment that I now thought was what that old thrown out stuffed cloth had been made for. It was already degrading, it had the grime of nature already woven into its texture, touches of green were now growing through its tight matrix of fibres and this moment, was perhaps the moment of its transformation, woven back into the matrix it had emerged from. 

The speckled wood

 A moment of inconsequence, but it felt more real to me than the many systems of thinking and categories of connections that I had been wrestling with over the last few years. 

I sitt in a plastic red chair, writing about something I felt yesterday. As I lean forward to write, I'm aware my shirt lifts away from my lower back and I feel the cold air that this lets move across my skin. The chair exerts pressure to my upper thighs and I can rock slightly from one side to the other to make myself more aware of this. I cough occasionally, I am getting over a nasty viral infection that I have had to struggle against over the last two weeks. I wonder how many more I will succumb to in the future, before one takes a hold that I cant shift. I have an itch that I cant really get at as it sits between my shoulder blades, but I don't mind, it helps make me aware of that part of my body and it guides me to an ache that sits across the top of my shoulders. My attention, like that of the butterfly's, flits around and then I forget these body sensations because something else takes my attention. The flow of awareness, the impact of constantly occurring qualia on my perceptual screen, is like a mist that I walk through and as things appear to solidify themselves as they emerge out of this mist, I tend to mostly let them fade back again, unless it feels as if they hold some sort of importance. 

For a brief moment this morning I saw something come into focus as I was looking at the work of Flora Joan, who is an acupuncturist and artist. She is part of 'The Nature of the Points' a group based in Amsterdam who have been thinking and acting within a territory that straddles visualisation and healing.

Tongue and diagnostics: Flora Joan

Tongue reflexology

The tongue can be used as a diagnostic tool and it can be used to assess the flow of Qi (energy) in the body. I was interested in Flora Joan's illustration because she was bringing together elements from both inside and outside traditional Chinese medicine, in particular her own focus on a return to nature. Looking at the range of activities that take place under the umbrella of 'The Nature of the Points', also helped me develop my own thoughts on how useful my work on the visualisation of interoception was and I could see a clear link between the work they do and what I'm attempting. 

Visualisations of subjective models of the body's interior

I have cardiac arrhythmia and certain medical and music scholars have speculated that Beethoven may also have had the same condition. In his musical scores he sometime uses asymmetrical rhythmical patterns and changes in tempo, that could possibly mirror the effects of an irregular heartbeat. This aspect of his work has also been linked to a correlation between the known times when it is argued he would have experienced stress or a very high emotional connection with what he was engaging with. It is impossible to prove this of course, but it is another of those possibilities or what ifs, that help me frame up what I'm thinking about in relation to emotion and its communication. 

An invisible hand about to close on the chest

Sometimes I dream about my inner body being squeezed and then realise its my heart trying to tell me something. Out of dreams, sometimes emerge images that sit between the conscious and the unconscious mind, they can be an alternative poetry of the body. 

I think of Beethoven is a giant of poetry, particularly in the way his music's expressive power and ability to evoke emotions, goes right down to my body's core. I 'feel' his emotional intensity, as a type of 'sound poetry', something that I intuitively feel ought to be possible as 'visual poetry' as well. 

The externalisation of an idea of a headache

I have attempted to visualise inner sensations in a variety of ways and after running several workshops with people looking at how others can visualise interoceptual experiences, am now very aware of the necessary time it takes for people to confront the difficulties that face them when attempting to learn a new or developing language. Often you need to show a cliché in order to open a pathway towards an alternative.

Headache

Sometimes I have to rely on existing conventions and deal with clichés, as in the image of a headache I came up with above. This was an image arrived at by consensus but which I now feel could go on the side of a packet of Anadin. Which in itself might be a good thing, but I have never thought of my work as graphic design for pharmaceutical companies. 

An image of sinusitis intuitively feels to me that it is much more interesting.

Headache: Sinusitis

This is a more personalised image, one made as a consequence of a conversation, so it is an actual 'portrait' of two people's interoceptual experience, rather than a generic visual idea. Perhaps this is where the value of the work lies and that by tapping into individual experiences and trying to make them visible; am I finally making some sort of embodied visual poetry?

See also:

Drawing the internal body

Drawing and healing

Drawing and urban acupuncture 

Sensuous aggregates 

What is embodiment?

 'Our bodies are not mere vessels for the containment of our personalities, our agencies or our disembodied souls. Our embodiment is the very manner of our co-activity with, emplacement in and experience of the world. ... We are entangled, we are processes of becoming, we are products of resistance to the conditions in which we find ourselves.' (Noë, 2023, p.139)

In his book 'The Entanglement', philosopher Alva Noë explores the inseparability of life, art, and philosophy. The book has helped me to see how I can move between one mode of visualising things and another. For instance I might spend time trying to visualise a pain, either my own or someone else's, this interoceptual or somatic experience can appear to be totally unrelated to a creature that seems to emerge from my subconscious, or an image I might have made of a cornfield on a sunny day; but they are all part of my experience of the world. At one moment I might be in conversation with someone about their state of mind, an hour later I might be walking through a rain storm and be wondering if the Gods of nature are all against me and then as I take shelter in a local museum, might find myself gazing at Egyptian artefacts from 5,000 years ago. 

Whether I am experienced by others as a soaked escapee from the storm, or a serious historical researcher, as an artist or as an old man, will also effect how I feel about my experiences. But the architecture of the museum, the layout of the streets I walk through and the geological features of the land I walk over will also be shaping and influencing both my body and the thoughts it contains. 

I am inseparable from my body and my body is inseparable from the world. As Jacob Von Uexküll pointed out in his text, 'A Stroll through the worlds of animals and men', each creature has its own 'unwelten' or phenomenal world. Living beings therefore perceive their worlds in terms of species-specific, spatio-temporal, "self-in-world" subjective reference frames. He called these framings, the 'umwelt'. The structure of the world view of each creature is therefore determined by the nature of each individual species; by its physiology, its behaviour, and its interactions with its environment. For myself as an artist, I thought the most important thing was the fact that Von Uexküll when pointing these things out, also stated that he firmly believed that these world views could only be disclosed through individual subjectivity.

This is how Jacob Von Uexküll introduced his idea;

'The place, a flower-strewn meadow, humming with insects, fluttering with butterflies. Here we may glimpse the worlds of the lowly dwellers of the meadow. To do so, we must first blow, in fancy, a soap bubble around each creature to represent its own world, filled with the perceptions which it alone knows. When we ourselves then step into one of these bubbles, the familiar meadow is transformed. Many of its colourful features disappear, others no longer belong together but appear in new relationships. A new world comes into being. Through the bubble we see the world of the burrowing worm, of the butterfly, or of the field mouse; the world as it appears to the animals themselves, not as it appears to us. This we may call the phenomenal world or the self-world of the animal.'

However the physiology of the individuals of each species, is a product of a particular type of memory. Raymond Ruyer who developed the concept of embryogenesis stated, 'Memory is not the property of bodies. Bodies, or what appear as "bodies", are the property of memory'. He also wrote that consciousness begins with a material idea. A forming principle being at work, right from the beginning that directs the actions of bodies. Every cell forms itself out of the 'memory' of the principles adhered to by the sub-atomic forces that control the behaviour of materials. Therefore both the form of each creature and even what we think of as consciousness, are the products of the movement of relationships between atomic forces. How they can move and in what possible variations being dependent on the structural principles inherited from all the previous embodied generations of electrons and protons, neutrons and / or electromagnetic or other forces that underpin everything. These rules then determine the possibilities of events coming together in different arrangements, such as a finger in a human ending up being something that can be used to help hold a pencil, but in a bat being something to help tauten a membrane so that it can fly. 

Ruyler uses diagrams to illustrate his ideas.

In 'The Genesis of Living Forms', the folding of the earth to form the Alps is compared with the folding of a flat sheet to form a tube, which is in turn compared to the folding of cells during the process of embryogenesis, in particular during cell division and differentiation. 

I'm sure Gilles Deleuze must have been reading Ruyler or had come across his ideas when he wrote 'The Fold: Leibniz and the Baroque'. Leibniz had developed a concept of the monad, which was that the universe is made up of an infinite number of basic, immaterial, and indestructible substances, that in his Fold text, Deleuze interpreted as folds of space, time and movement, going on to describe the world itself as a body of infinite folds that twist and weave through space and time.

So 'embodiment' when considering this framework, could be a sort of enfolding of things. 

From a series of images trying to visualise a moment/event in the life of a fish

A fragment of a body/emotional landscape

The body folds into its environment, at the same time the body's internal events are folding into and are the body's interior, which itself is contiguous with its exterior.  

The body as a landscape with inhabitants (fragment of an animation)

As you make an animation it is as if you 'fold' something into life. Beginning with just a few marks, gradually you add more and more material until you have enough to create movement. For the animator the background and the figures that act upon it are equally important, as the one defines the other.

Two birds attempt to blow life into the landscape (detail from far left, above)

References:

Deleuze, G. (1992) The Fold: Leibniz and the Baroque Univ Of Minnesota Press

Noë, A. (2023) The Entanglement: How Art and Philosophy Make Us What We Are. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press

Ruyer, R., (2019) The Genesis of Living Forms. Rowman & Littlefield

Von Uexküll, J. (1992) A stroll through the worlds of animals and men: A picture book of invisible worlds. Semiotica, Vol. 89 (Issue 4), pp. 319-391. https://doi.org/10.1515/semi.1992.89.4.319

See also: 

Invisible worlds

Connecting the singularity

Interoceptual textures and surface flow

Drawing and quantum theory

The visualisation of embodied thinking

An infection is surrounded by epithelial cells that produce an antimicrobial peptide

Both mental and physical experiences are imprinted into our bodies. This is partly why I have recently posted on the tattoo, which I was thinking about as a sort of analogous process, suggesting that tattooing can be thought of as a metaphor for how the body's internal cells are imprinted by external events. External experiences are held in the body/mind as imprints and memories, and because they are now inside the body, they effect physiological change. 

Our nervous systems are layered, and we have inherited older parts that still work because they were effective during the early part of our evolution as an animal and they helped us to survive.  These primitive reflexes still mobilise our fight-or-flight decisions and they are integral to our inner emotional feeling tone. This feeling tone is an embodied awareness as experiences are encoded in this system non-verbally and non-consciously. This is why I have decided that drawing and other material processes such as making things in clay, are so essential to the awareness raising needed if we are to engage with how our body/minds are working to keep us well. 

I have been looking at my own history and there were times when my experiences of life were traumatic. I feel sometimes as if I still carry these events within myself, even though they are events that took place a long time ago. It is as if these past experiences are somehow still 'fixed' in the body, the problem then being that some of my actions and reactions to new experiences, can be still in some ways, responses to situations that are no longer the case. 

I recently undertook an awareness exercise to help myself identify whether or not my body might be working harder than it needed to when operating automatic self defence mechanisms. After going through the symptoms, it did seem to be the case. I sometimes get cold hands or feet, a common sign of blood being diverted away from the periphery towards the core muscles that help us flee or fight, when we are stressed. I am very sensitive to bright lights and loud noises. I sometimes lose spatial awareness and become dissociated, and I often have that feeling of having my head in the clouds. I have also in the past had panic attacks, but thank goodness I have had none during the last few years.  All of these are signs that my mind/body is over compensating and that it goes into survival mode much too quickly, because it has not been able to 'forget' past experiences that are no longer threats.

Drawing and making things are activities that enable me to feel safe, they are my main health resources, or at least it feels that way to me. Those inner body feelings of an anxious stomach and tight chest, disappear when I am engaged in drawing or making ceramics. I have been for a while now exploring images associated with interoception, perhaps an awareness of how these images came to be, can help others overcome their own embodied anxieties. 

One of the books I have been reading about embodied stress suggests that if you are to move on past your self defence mechanism triggers, an extremely useful skill is to learn to check whether you can inwardly visualise the size, shape and weight of your body. the book suggests that an awareness of the boundary of the skin, helps differentiate who we are; the skin being a transition place between me and not me. The book explains that a layer of our nerve rich skin grew from embryonic ectoderm, which also forms the brain; therefore the skin it is argued, is another outpost of the nervous system, as is the stomach. However, when you try and envisage the body, there can be bits missing. Some people on trying to visualise the body realise that in their body/mind they are missing legs, or limbs are far too small, images of their bodies may be diffuse, abdomens absent, one side of a lung absent, or bones far too soft. In fact it is in the spaces between what feels known and what feels unknown, that some sort of visual understanding is being forged and the unknownness of these elements, is what makes the images made from these feelings so interesting. They are sort of the opposite of photographic realism, they are glimpses of things that are felt and then in order to catch the glimpse, you need to re-invent the form that it is coming in. Even with all this ambiguity and missing elements, there is something about this process that feels much more 'realistic' than copying photographs, because at least I am directly being in touch with myself or others feelings, no matter how tenuously. 

The short condensed text, 'Finding Safety via Embodiment' by Steve Haines (The Body College, 2019), sets out questions that are designed to help you visualise your body...This is the verbatim text...  "Initially it can be useful to go through them as a sequence, using the mnemonic WOSI; Weight, Outline, Skin, Inside. with more experience you can be much more flexible. Often the simple question ‘how does x compare to y’ can open up a realisation of an incomplete mapping of the body. Weight ‘How does the weight of your body feel on the table?’ ‘Do your shoulder blades, hips, knees and ankles feel even on the table?’ Outline ‘Can you feel the outline of your body, the silhouette it makes?’ ‘Does the outline feel the same from the inside with your eyes closed as it would if you were looking at your body or touching it?’ ‘How close or far away are your hands and feet. They are not too big too small or too close or too far away?’ Skin ‘Can you feel your skin as a clear boundary between the inside and the outside?’ ‘Does your skin feel sharply defined and easy to contact or is it a bit blurry or amorphous?’ Inside ‘How does the inside of your body feel?’ ‘Does the inside of your body feel full, flowing, alive or are there bits that feel empty, fixed, numb or hard to contact?’ " (Haines, 2019)

However, I had a few questions myself about the questions asked. Haines presumes that the inner body map in some way resembles the way we see or feel our bodies from the outside. The work I have already done in relation to interoception and how to visualise inner or somatic experiences, has pointed to a wide variety of ways for people to visualise inner body feelings. Drawings that have been done in workshops, as well as images I have made myself, point to a wide range of possible approaches to visualising feelings.

Images made during a workshop

The issue for myself is that by attempting to visualise a somatic experience, the person involved begins to 'own' the experience and to actively engage in building up a relationship with feelings and inner body sensations that they would normally ignore. 

A visualisation of stomach pain

Identification of pains within a crude body map

I have been undergoing pilates sessions, in order to come to a better understanding/awareness of my own body and at the same time attending therapy sessions to get a better grasp of how my mind is working. Hopefully by undertaking the two approaches at the same time, I can gain a better grasp on my own mind/body relationship. I am of course still drawing and having conversations with other people about their own feelings/understandings of these issues. 

Somewhere in the mix, whether it is in the workshops with other people whereby they make interoceptual images, or in my own self reflections, at some point images will hopefully emerge that can help with some sort of communication of what is an eternal conundrum; the fact that we cant see inside anyone else's head.  We do however need to have empathy for others and we need to operate in ways that enable cooperative actions, these things are central to our collective human condition. The making of art, is I feel, something that illuminates our experience of life, that it enriches it and gives it more depth. The mind/body relationship is something humans have had to consider over and over again, each society and time, coming to different conclusions as to how to make sense of consciousness. 

Above all, I'm trying to find answers to the development of a practice that ties together all the various parts of my life experience, a way of working that acknowledges that environments will effect both our bodies and our minds. I also believe that we are inseparable from nature and an integral part of it, which means that you cant step outside of it, a situation that leads me to also believe that everything is interconnected and that this reflects a powerful quantum interconnectedness, which is based on an argument that subatomic particles are in some form of intimate connection with one another, no matter how far apart they may be.

Because these beliefs are not scientifically verifiable and don't fit any one religion, I'm forced to tiptoe around the frayed edges of science and this is why I often post on esoteric ideas such as Mesmerism or Rayonism or am looking to non western traditions, such as a belief in chakra points. I sense that there is some other way to tap into the energies that surround us, and that art can be helpful, as it gives legitimacy to practitioners such as myself, as metaphor inventors and makers. There is a word, 'grok' which means to understand profoundly through intuition or empathy, which was coined by Robert A. Heinlein in his 1961 book 'Stranger in a Strange Land', which is a good word to use in these circumstances, as it suggests a grasp of a something, that you know is there, but you cant put your finger on it. 'Grokking' can be used in a sentence as you would a word like running; to grok being to empathise so deeply with others that you merge or blend with them, even though you might not agree with the way they set out their beliefs. For instance I can empathise deeply with a religious person, even though I don't believe in their religion. 

This deep empathy is often associated with the times when we are in love. In the book, 'Kama Muta: Discovering the Connecting Emotion' Alan Fiske goes into great detail about how we feel when we are moved by feelings of love. He uses phrases such as 'being moved', 'feeling connected', 'feeling warm and fuzzy' and 'being at one with someone else', all of which suggests that we are at our best when our interoceptual feelings chime with those of someone else and that embodied feeling is at its most wonderful and beautiful best, when it is a shared experience. 

References:

Barrett, L. F. (2018) How Emotions are made London: Pan

Biernoff S, Johnstone F. (2024) 

What can art history offer medical humanities? 

Medical Humanities Published Online: 30 May. doi: 10.1136/medhum-2023-012763 

Available at: https://mh.bmj.com/content/early/2024/05/30/medhum-2023-012763

Briggs, S. (2023) How to change your body London: Synergetic Press

Crawford, D. H. (2009) The Invisible enemy: A natural history of Viruses Oxford: OUP

Fiske, A. (2019) Kama Muta: Discovering the Connecting Emotion London: Routledge

Menzam-Sills, C. (2018) The Breath Of Life: An Introduction to Craniosacral Biodynamics New York: North Atlantic Books

Pert, C. B. (1999) Molecules of Emotion London: Pocket Books

See also:

Drawing and quantum theory

Why do we draw?

Object orientated ontology and drawing

Lines as symbols of invisible forces

Visualising energy flow

Drawings as aesthetic transducers